Platonist - A Platonist Agrarianism—pro Old South Values—in love with hierarchies in language.
All instances of language are persuasive (language is sermonic), rhetorical, and imbued with ethical values. Human utterances reflect a set of values and aim to move others to accept the image of the world in which those values apply (like Burke identification)
He writes about dialectic as a discourse that leads to knowledge of nature – but shares tendency of Burke and Richards to include all forms of discourse in rhetoric
Hierarchy of Argument - Definition is the noblest argument – noble is value-laden adjective – arguing at the level of pure ideas - 3 levels of knowledge (1. Brute facts, 2. Generalizations and theories, 3. Universals and first principles) 3rd level is source of value judgements—metaphysical.
Another hierarchy; highest (argument) mid (cause and effect) lowest (arguments of circumstance).
Takes Burke and applies ethics—Christian ethics.
Rhetoric is cognate with language” All language is rhetoric, hence language is not neutral.
“it is ridiculous that the utterances of men could be neutral—it is a positive act with consequences in the world”
Once you have that, you can proceed logically from that definition – the fight is with the definition of terms
How words are defined is a problem for Weaver because he realized that language changes over time, but he did not quite know how to deal with that
Circumstances are least noble because you are not writing from terms, only from self-interest (Fish says circumstances are the ONLY possible argument)
Is conservative but liberals admire him because he was critical of the corporate state and big business. At heart agrarian (was from landed family in South – Weaverville)
His mission was to transmit Western traditional values, set his fate against modern urban life , keeping agricultural ideal alive
Often considered elitist and racist
For Weaver – truth is the master context of rhetoric
Willing to say that meaning is socially constructed but believes in a fixed accumulated meaning – when meanings decay, society is in decay – there is an essence
Not unlike Vico’s “barbarism of reflection” when meaning decays to the point that meanings are in our own mind and far from the common sense
God terms particular to certain age, vague movement towards progress and freedom. Devil terms—mirror image—Nazi, un-American, terrorist. Must guard against god terms being used as propaganda—and Devil terms too. Upn hearing a god or devil term, listener should “hold a dialectic with himself to consider the intention.
An ethics of rhetoric requires that “ultimate terms be ultimate in some rational sense”
Like Aristotle, distinguishes dialectic from rhetoric, defining dialectic as abstract reasoning about doubtful propositions with goal of establishing the truth—does not produce commitment, rhetoric does.
Need a “scheme of values” like whom? Quintilian? Good man speaking well? But there it’s “good rhetoric being used” from Language as Sermonic
Rhetoric must be based on dialectically secured principles to be ethical. So he’s looking for A Truth.
Bemoans the fall of rhetoric from philosophical and important to being taught by “various fringe people” including TSs—now a remedial class. It is the fault of all that is “scientistic” mistrust of pathos (so, anti Ramus and Descartes)
Weaver is a modern look at relationship between faith and reason—n an age that doesn’t know faith” (Toledano)
Weaver, Richard. Ethics of Rhetoric.
(1955)